


Rewrite

by FyrDrakken



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-05
Updated: 2007-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrDrakken/pseuds/FyrDrakken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You only get one chance to be in one time and place. Only one chance to alter the course of events before you have to let them go. But he knows the way to cheat, too. History is really just recorded memory. And memories can be altered. Erased. Even rewritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You can't erase the past.

He of all people knows that.

He knows how mutable time is, how it flows and alters -- and how far one can get away with bending it before it twists out of shape and tears holes in reality.

You only get one chance to be in one time and place. Only one chance to alter the course of events before you have to let them go.

But he knows the way to cheat, too.

History is really just recorded memory. And memories can be altered. Erased. Even rewritten.

The Time Lords knew how fragile time could be. It was why they would not interfere in the course of events unless it seemed absolutely necessary. Maverick that he was, he understood the fear but refused to be bound by it.

The Time Lords had always considered memory to be fair game.

* * * * *

There was a way to go about doing this. There were forms, structures, recognized steps to the dance. He had done many things over the centuries of his existence -- but it had been long enough since he'd tried some of them that he'd mostly forgotten how.

So the first time he raised the matter -- tested the waters with a vague allusion towards the idea that there was something of a very physical nature that he might be interesting in doing if she were so inclined -- it wasn't so much of a surprise that she turned him down flat. With an insulting rapidity, actually. But the real problem was the discomfort that set in after the topic had been raised and tabled, changing the mood in the room and sapping the joy from what had up to that point been a fairly convivial meal.

If he couldn't unsay it, he could at least go one better than having the pair of them fumbling their way around the gaping chasm in the conversation that was the exchange they were pretending hadn't happened.

Really, it was a kindness to the girl, making her forget the thing he would rather not have said. The last thing he wanted to do was make her uncomfortable around him.

It was important that she stay. (How important, was a matter he wasn't inclined to examine. Introspection he tended to avoid out of sheer self-preservation.)

And all it took was a touch.

Ten minutes of memory gone, just like that.

She'd never miss it -- and she was so much happier with it gone...

* * * * *

If he'd had any sense (and really, he never had), he'd have let the matter drop. But days and then weeks passed, in the unmarked subjective fashion of those unhinged from the natural flow of events, and at some point he started to get the sense that she'd welcome him raising the matter again/for-the-first-time. And so he did, gleeful bravado ever being a strong suit, and she turned him down again. But not so badly this time -- as though she'd welcomed the indication of interest on his part, though she didn't share it. Less of a subtext of, "And let us never speak of this again," and more of a, "Try me again later on."

And so he would have let it stand, had she not made a little joke about it some time later. Not too much time -- a matter of hours -- and not really a cruel joke, but it wasn't a subject he was inclined to feel humorous about.

It occurred to him later that she might have actually been flirting with him a bit, and he hadn't recognized it at the time.

But by then it was too late, for he'd already taken those hours from her memory.

* * * * *

It was with a sense of obligation that he offered "Rickey" another opportunity to join them on the TARDIS. The boy had come through for them when it really counted and made the tough decision. And his companion might want a companion of her own, bright sociable being that she was.

It was with no particular sense of surprise that he heard Mickey's refusal. The boy hadn't come far enough from the paralytic terror of their last meeting to joyously run aboard an alien spaceship. The one thing that might have done it would have been following Rose -- if he loved her enough.

Either he didn't, or he'd gotten the point when his girlfriend pried herself from his arms and ran away with a strange (very strange) older (centuries older) man. She'd made a choice then, even if Mickey -- or Rose herself -- didn't quite realize what it had been yet.

He was only relieved Mickey turned the offer down because he didn't quite trust the lad not to freeze up in a crisis again.

It wasn't at all that he didn't want to have to share her attention with someone else.

* * * * *

He made the offer again, not too many hours after the adrenalin rush of near-destruction had faded a bit. Still not accepted, though there was a definite sense that she might agree if given time to think about it.

He couldn't stand the suspense, and took her memory of the question away after too many hours of fretting over what she'd eventually decide.

She had a better reaction every time he laid the matter before her. Either he was getting better at bringing it up, or she was getting more and more fond of him as they spent time together.

He'd try again later.

* * * * *

He didn't examine his motivations for booting that Adam lad off the TARDIS. He'd had travelling companions he wasn't particularly fond of, but he'd generally let them stay until they chose to leave or circumstances took them away.

He'd joked about Adam being Rose's new boyfriend in a very pointed manner, daring her to confirm or deny the allegation.

It was nothing to him if Rose wanted to bring a boy along. And she was having such fun showing off for the lad, too. If it made her happy, it made him happy.

Such a shame Rose's pet didn't work out. Such a relief that Rose was on the same page about dropping him off home -- it could have gotten messy if she'd tried to argue that Adam had just made a mistake and deserved a second chance. Either she'd have talked him into keeping the pest around (and given him the opportunity to screw up again), or he'd have upset her insisting (and risked her demanding to be taken home herself).

Disposing of the "competition" was beneath him. There was no "contest" taking place. He wasn't trying to "win" anything (or anyone).

 

* * * * *

She said yes.

She said yes and it should have been wonderful.

But he wanted perfection -- he wanted to be smoothly competent and surprising her with his amazing skills in yet another arena of expertise. Instead they fumbled about trying to figure out each other's desires and reactions, he in this still-new body that hadn't been put through this particular set of paces yet and she with a self-confidence in her abilities out of all proportion to her actual experience. A well-matched pair in their mutual clumsiness.

It could have been an endearing memory, to be followed by better ones after he learned how this incarnation wanted to go about this activity and she learned an infinite number of tricks outside her previous lovers' skills sets.

But it wasn't how he wanted her first memory of the two of them together to be.

She'd said yes now, she'd say it again later.

When she woke in the morning he was gone from her room, along with the memories of the night before.

* * * * *

A hard lesson to learn, the very finite limits of what alterations in history one could get away with. Much harder for her, learning it through such an emotionally fraught event. Having a father for the first time she could remember, only long enough to batter her heart with a sense of just what she had lost and couldn't steal back.

Afterwards, back on the TARDIS and well away from 1987 London, she came to him. This time she wasn't waiting for him to offer, she was asking.

She wanted comfort and he gave it. He couldn't give her what she'd wanted most, so he'd give her what he had.

He really dithered over it afterwards, while she slept. Was it better to leave her with the memory of the sweet to ease the bitter? Or would it get things off on the wrong foot, "starting off" with such painful associations?

In the end what decided him was the vague sense that he wasn't overly keen on being Rose's consolation prize in the place of the father she'd never had. The age difference made things dodgy enough without so explicitly linking himself to Peter Tyler.

Next time he'd let her keep the memories.

* * * * *

Jack Harkness couldn't have been a better destabilizing influence had he been designed for the purpose.

He'd been enjoying the process of growing more comfortable with Rose, looking forward to the point when he would undoubtedly figure out exactly how to intensify their relationship a bit without completely fucking things up. But after a single meeting with "Captain" Jack, Rose was showing an excess of initiative. He wasn't keen on trying things out with a witness -- someone to notice if Rose suddenly showed a few gaps in memory, someone to ensure that there wouldn't be any retries or "do overs."

He blamed Jack's omnivorous sexual charisma for putting ideas in Rose's head, without ever really considering the effects of the erasures on Rose's point of view. He saw ongoing progress with her -- but without the memory of the steps they'd made, she saw stagnation.

One thing Jack did turn out to be good for -- aside from helping with some of the always-postponed repairs and maintenance on the TARDIS -- was impartiality. If Rose seemed inclined to play Jack off against him as a motivating factor, Jack was just as happy to let himself be used to tease Rose. Whichever way the game ended up, he just wanted to be a player.

It turned out to be a surprisingly stable system, and out of reckless curiosity he let the game play out to Jack's satisfaction over the course of several days. The potential pairings were run through in rapid succession and by the third or fourth "night" they were on to figuring out whose bed seemed almost big enough to fit three comfortably.

There was a certain giddy thrill in letting someone else be in the driver's seat. The Doctor let matters go on for about a week before concluding that it had been fun but he couldn't very well go on leaving someone else in control. And he was barely confident of his ability to work a somewhat-sexual relationship with just one human without unpleasantness -- two was more than he thought he wanted to juggle long-term.

It seemed to be working out so very well, though. He liked having Jack around, and the three of them were having so much fun together.

He wanted to buy time to consider things before they became irrevocable.

* * * * *

When wiping two different people it was vital to ensure they didn't have any discrepancies to compare. Don't leave enough time between erasing the first and the second that they might run into each other and detect a problem. Make sure the pair of them were in the same places and doing the same things that they'd been on the morning he was sending them back to. When he'd decided to run this little threesome experiment, he'd made a mental note of a "zero point" to revert them to and what each of them had been doing at the time. Rose had her breakfast in the garden every morning, so there was no trick there, but he had to commit a very small act of sabotage in undoing the repair Jack had been making at the start time to get him back to it.

Jack gave him much to ponder on several levels. Setting aside the ongoing relationship experiment he'd disrupted and then contributed towards, there was his declared issue with having his memory tampered with. Hopefully a week wouldn't be as upsetting to Jack as two years, but just to be sure it was best he never found out. (Though, really -- how could one travel in time and balk at having their memory erased occasionally? How else to prevent creating paradoxes through foreknowledge of one's own subjective timeline? The Doctor was perhaps failing to sufficiently consider the effects of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in preventing non-Time Lords from interacting with past and future versions of themselves.)

Jack was not Rose, nor from her time period, and so his reactions couldn't be used as a valid predictor of hers. Hopefully she wouldn't share his particular odd aversion to the odd bit of memory-tampering. Even if she'd had that strange reaction to learning of the telepathic translation effect, it wasn't at all the same kind of thing, and anyway she'd gotten used to it right away.

He still didn't believe it had been wrong to be removing the odd memory here and there. But he suspected it might upset his current pair of companions if they knew about it.

He'd think about the matter of Jack for a while. Next time he'd let things stand -- he wouldn't risk erasing memories again.

Meanwhile, they were off to Japan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fresh body, fresh start.

Fresh body, fresh start.

The disorientation of regeneration generally shook things up a bit, helped him start out the new life without being excessively burdened by the patterns of the last one. He was used to having companions providing a bit of continuity from one phase of his existence to the next -- but most of them seemed to be able to cope with the concept of this unique form of reincarnation.

It was so unfair that Rose couldn't.

How utterly, stubbornly human of her not to.

It might have been flattering, that she had clearly gotten so wound up about him that she wouldn't accept a substitute. But he wasn't a replacement, he was himself -- why did these humans have to get so damned fixated on external appearance?

And after he'd gone and died to save her, too.

Honestly -- you'd think the girl would show a bit of gratitude.

But she wasn't grateful -- maybe didn't even realize what he'd done to protect her. (Perhaps he'd taken a bit too much when he erased the vortex from her memories?) Ungrateful, terrified, and ready to leave him right fucking now.

He tried -- he could talk his way into or out of most things, and he knew how Rose Tyler thought. He told her what he thought would convince her. Anything at all.

It wasn't enough.

* * * * *

Figures -- absorb a time vortex and burn yourself out like a phoenix to save a girl's mind and soul, and she can't stand to be around you just because you have to go and change your face afterwards. One flashy little sword fight and she's all over you. Humans and their symbolism.

He buried the question of whether he'd truly succeeded in convincing her he was the same man. (Though he wasn't, he really wasn't, all new face and body and responses and everything, only the memories were the same, and didn't he know how changeable and erasable and rewritable those were?) The same man or just a highly acceptable replacement, he wouldn't let it matter. So long as she was happy to stay with this version of him.

* * * * *

After New Earth, he knew what she'd say even before he asked her. And he wanted to find out how this body's skills compared.

Quite well, actually. Marked improvement, possibly, although he refused to consider the possibility that he'd ever been bad at anything at all. Ever.

He didn't have to remember the first time Rose ever said yes to him. If she couldn't remember it, why should he?

He also didn't have to remember refusing to be a consolation prize for losing Peter Tyler. But when the idea of being a consolation prize for himself arose, it refused to be banished.

He'd pushed it -- made his move too soon after regenerating. She hadn't had time to get used to the man he was now, and accept that he wasn't at all a replacement for the man she'd met.

He saw it in her eyes, sometimes -- that shadow of regret for the man he'd been. Would there be less regret if she could remember how much time she'd really spent with him, or more?

Another question he refused to ponder. He took away the memory of the few weeks they'd spent since leaving New Earth and resolved to give her a bit more time.

He'd even take her on a proper date. How about a concert? Something loud and vibrant that she never would have seen in her own lifetime...

* * * * *

Being chased by a werewolf and meeting a queen was even better than a concert. And it was just so him, and it was just so perfect that this was what she enjoyed, too. Such a wonderful pair they made...

Dealing with consequences had never been his strong suit. After all, the habit of centuries was to disappear after the excitement ended and avoid the cleanup, the rebuilding, the thanks -- or the blame. He rarely returned in time to deal with the aftereffects of his own actions.

In other lives he'd been able to see all the pieces moving, get hints of where the events around him were leading up to. But not in this one. This time around, he wasn't about past or future, but only the glorious fast-fleeting now.

No worries about what one annoyed queen could set into motion beyond her own lifetime.

No worries about what happened when his companion eventually stopped focusing upon "now" and started thinking about, "now what?"

No worries about what happened if his companion never did get past the "now."

* * * * *

Sarah Jane frightened him.

He liked to think of his past companions as living out long happy fulfilling lives once they'd left him, taking the lessons he'd tried to teach and becoming better people as a result. The idea of someone waiting, aging and perhaps dying and never really going on to live without him, horrified him.

The decent thing to do would be to tell Rose, make her see that she was only going to be with him for a short while -- an eyeblink of a Time Lord, and not so great a chunk of her own brief existence -- and that she needed to always be preparing herself for this time to end.

The selfish thing would be to tell her she could stay with him for as long as she wanted to, never ever had to leave him, and he would never leave her.

Selfish on both sides. For her, not to realize that the only way he could stand to give up all his loves was to believe that they were happy and that the possibility remained of their paths crossing again, never truly losing them completely and forever because he gave them up with so much of their time left to live. For him, to play along with her romantic fantasy of being together forever and to almost let himself believe that he could have her for long enough.

There was no such thing as long enough. Even Romana had left him. Even Susan. Time and accident didn't have to carry them away -- they'd leave him themselves in the end.

But maybe Rose wouldn't.

But certainly she would.

He welcomed Mickey's company. Not half so much as he wanted Sarah Jane back -- and honestly, why on earth would she go telling him she'd been waiting for him for decades, living her life on hold, and then refuse to come back to him when he finally appeared and could try to make it up to her? -- but at least Mickey was a diversion.

Because right now he couldn't decide whether letting Rose have the kind of bizarre complicated human "romantic" relationship she wanted would help matters or hurt them. Which made him deeply grateful that at the moment she couldn't remember having had anything of the sort with himself.

And Mickey was no Jack, to happily goad them on to a threesome. So long as Mickey was there with his blatant hopes and the weight of prior claim (that Rose could actually remember), things between Rose and himself would remain suspended.

With Mickey there to serve as chaperone, he could let things stay uncomplicated.

* * * * *

And then things got complicated on their very next trip.

His philosophy of crosstime intergalactic tourism was to throw oneself into things. Leap at whatever opportunities presented themselves. Take advantage of whatever here-and-now you encountered, because you could never be there again. (Not, at least, without risking being eaten by a gargoyle.)

And he might well have gone along with being pounced on by a famous brilliant beautiful courtesan even had Rose been back at the TARDIS remembering that the two of them had been intimate at various points in their association. Probably would have, in fact. (He could never quite get the hang of the rules by which humans determined whether certain courtship rituals or sexual activities did or did not constitute apparent ownership of the other party's private bits.)

He had a few dark moments after he thought he was stranded in the eighteenth century. Mostly revolving around whether he'd remembered to show Rose how to work the quick return button on the TARDIS and whether he'd inadvertently taken that memory away from her afterwards. He could just about handle being stuck on this planet travelling through time the archaic day-by-day method for a few centuries if he knew the TARDIS would be waiting for him in twenty-first century London, but drifting in the far reaches of the galaxy a thousand years away? He'd build another one, or mug a Time Agent for his transport, or something. But he'd been stranded before, many times. Something always turned up.

Finding the one unbroken doorway was like a gift -- no, a reward, for having done the noble thing and risked stranding himself on behalf of some bird he'd just met. He got his TARDIS back, and he could show Reinette a good time. Steal a bit from history -- so long as he brought her back to a point before she was missed, no one would notice if she were months or even a year or two older, and her too-brief life would have been that much longer and richer. Best of all, he'd get another shot at giving Rose the lesson she hadn't learned from Sarah Jane. She'd see him with another woman, loving her and giving her back to history, and maybe then she'd understand about what he would and wouldn't accept from a companion.

It was a special little slap in the face from the universe -- no, a punch in the gut -- to have that held out before him and then taken away over the course of a few minutes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd made his peace with the situation, he thought.

He'd made his peace with the situation, he thought. Rose was there for him, for as long as she was still enjoying it, and Mickey was there for her, to give her someone to cling to when she got tired and left, and keep her from wasting thirty years waiting for him to pop back up with another chance to step into the TARDIS. And if Mickey kept him and Rose from wading into the murky waters of human romantic affections, that was probably for the best in the long run. (Though sometimes a bit annoying in the short run. Frequently, in fact.)

Blundering into that alternate universe upset the equilibrium. Losing Peter Tyler again -- and a version of her mother -- was bad enough, but having Mickey jump ship on them was the final straw. He'd been through this before, and wasn't even surprised when she came to him demanding comfort some hours later, after she'd reassured herself that her real mother was still there waiting for her. He wasn't sure he'd have preferred that she turn to Mickey with her re-orphaning angst, but he was sure that he didn't want to leave her with this memory as their "first time."

He let things go a few weeks, though. Enjoying it while it lasted.

Up until they had a truly lovely row on the topics of accountability, godlike meddling, and potential STD exposure by way of eighteenth century courtesans. He thought it was quite unnecessary to work the term "syphilis" into the conversation so many times with regard to Reinette. He also thought it served as sufficient notice to call their current "relationship" quits and revert to a platonic state.

Still, the timing worked out quite well, since the memory of Rose having had her face removed was one of those he wound up taking. He didn't think she needed to be carrying that particular trauma away with her -- it seemed to be experiences like that which convinced other companions that it was time to depart.

He may have been a bit heavy-handed where the memory of their argument was concerned, too. But that whole right-to-meddle issue was bound to crop up again -- he was just preventing future trouble by changing her mind a bit. Literally.

* * * * *

He had to wonder afterwards -- was it that he'd been delving too lightly in taking her memories? Had some of what he thought he'd removed leaked into her subconscious where he couldn't quite get to it? Or was it just that she was falling into the forms of being a "couple" despite his best efforts to keep her from doing so?

There had to be some underlying reason for the mortgage conversation.

The path of wisdom would have been to call the "experiment" to a halt and attempt to reinforce the "platonic" nature of their association.

He wasn't much on wisdom. Reckless experimentation and working things out on the fly was more his speed. Knowing that he could erase his mistakes didn't make him any more cautious.

And he was starting to get the sense that an ending was approaching, faster than either of them would like.

When given the choice of being left by a companion, or of seeing her killed in a situation he'd let her get into...

If he drove her away from him, or into the arms of another... Well, it would hurt. But it would hurt less.

Pity he'd misplaced Jack, really. He might have been useful at this point.

He wasn't really sure why he mentioned to her that he'd been a father at one point. Maybe it was that he hoped she'd get the hint that he'd done the "settling down" thing before and it hadn't exactly stuck. Maybe he wanted to put her off-balance again where he was concerned.

Maybe it was just that she was getting on his nerves going on about how awful children were and he wanted to shut her up.

* * * * *

The crash when it came was nothing short of spectacular. What kind of a demented worst-case scenario had an army of Cybermen and an army of Daleks destroying the earth in competition?

There was a glorious elegance to a solution that solved all his problems at once, saving two Earths and sending Rose off with a bang. (The setup was so neat, he rather thought he must not have forgotten everything his seventh incarnation had known about playing a long game after all.) Everything he'd wanted for her and that he thought she'd want for herself, all tidily packed off to the alternate universe, and the broken family fixed. Pete got his Jackie back, Jackie got Rose and Pete back, Mickey got Rose back, and Rose got all of them. Surely she'd barely miss him -- and since she knew it was a one-way trip, there'd be none of that business of her spending the rest of her life moping about hoping for the TARDIS to show back up.

All so perfect.

And then it fell flat.

He couldn't just send her right back after she bounced back out of the alternate universe. If she was that determined to refuse the salvation he'd offered -- well, he couldn't just take her choice away. (Never mind that he'd tried to do just that, or that he knew damned well how badly things could turn out for her if he let her stay, and how unlikely they were to come across a more perfect final destination for her. If he got more time with her after all, he wouldn't refuse it.)

The seconds where he thought he was watching her being dragged to her doom were an endless lesson in when not to let his companions exert their free will, because he'd bloody well known better and could have decided that this of all times was not the right point to let her make her own mistakes.

Pete's improbable last-moment rescue saved both of them. (All three, really, since the Doctor could well imagine the purgatorial existence of being trapped with a Jackie Tyler who blamed you for her daughter's loss. Almost better to be sucked into the void...)

But it marred his elegant solution. A beautiful concept, but bungled in the execution.

He'd been fully confident that Rose would do just fine in the alternate universe, so long as she had her family around her and didn't waste time waiting for his return. That she'd picked him over her family when she'd thought the decision to be permanent had been a bit unsettling. That she'd picked him and then wound up stuck with the family she hadn't chosen was more than a bit worrisome.

The idea that she might be miserable with the happy ending he'd so tidily set up for her kept him up nights.

He told himself that it was the good-bye thing that Sarah Jane had gotten so worked up about -- that it was only proper to go ahead and say what should have been said, instead of rushing her off without a word.

The truth was, he wanted to find out that she'd settled in and was going to be just fine.

A crying jag and declarations of love weren't what he'd been wanting to be greeted with.

He'd had a hopeful moment when she'd mentioned a baby -- surely she'd gone to Mickey as he'd expected, and they'd done that "settling down" thing she wanted so much? But, no. Well, good for Pete and Jackie, but they weren't the ones he'd been worried about.

He wasn't sure what to say to her. Had it been the wrong thing to do, erasing her memories whenever he didn't like the way their relationship was going? Wouldn't this have gone easier if he'd let them fight, get tired of each other, break up properly? Would she have given up wanting him more quickly if she properly remembered having had him -- or would it have only encouraged her to go on with this useless horrific pining if she remembered a real relationship rather than an "unrequited" one?

It was somewhat appropriate, given the half-existent nature of their relationship, that he wound up babbling until the connection was broken, leaving her thinking he was about to tell her he loved her without ever actually coming right out and saying it. Again, he didn't know -- would hearing it now be a consolation or just twisting the knife?

He'd deal. He'd find someone else. He'd go on. Always. But it was throwing his usual coping mechanisms out of whack that he couldn't think of her as being happy and vibrant and loved and loving where he'd left her.

And it was throwing his private little meltdown out of whack that there seemed to be an intruder in his TARDIS.

* * * * *

Just as well, really. Donna knocked him right out of that pointless introspection, gave him something to do with himself until his equilibrium could re-establish itself. He told her Rose was alive and well where she was, and almost convinced himself.

Still, thank God she hadn't stayed. He was getting a bit tired of being slapped, and he had a nagging suspicion that she would have kept that blasted dress on for an annoyingly inconvenient length of time.

Someone else would be along. There always was.


End file.
